The inhabitants of a cluster of villages in the Medel Valley have shown themselves less than keen to dig the stuff out of their own mountains

Photo: Simona Fabrizio

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Photo: Simona Fabrizio

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8:00AM BST 08 Apr 2012

It was not a question many villagers will ever have to face - and theirs was an answer that even fewer would probably give.

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But when residents of a remote Alpine valley were offered a share of a fortune that would have brought themtens of millionsof pounds, they said "No".

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Swiss banks may be bulging with gold ingots, but the inhabitants of a cluster of villages in the Medel Valley have shown themselvesless than keen to dig the stuff out of their own mountains.

After months of anguished debate, the villagers voted in a referendum last week to stop a Canadian mining company prospecting for the estimated$1.2billionworth of goldore believed to be lie in seams beneath the surrounding snow-capped mountains.

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It would have been Switzerland's first gold mine and one of only a handful in Europe but locals ran scared of the prospect of turning their valley into a miniature version of the Klondike.

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In doing so they rejected a windfall of around40 millionSwiss francs (£27 million) over the next 10 years – a veritable bonanza for the 450 inhabitants of the picturesque valley.

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The debate sowed deep dissentamid the timber-clad homes and quiet streets of the villages dotted along the valley, where people speak Romansch, a language descended from the Latin of the Roman legions who conquered the region2,000 yearsago.

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."There was a battle between the two halves of the village, for and against the mine. Alot of peopledon't like to talk about it," said the owner of a delicatessenselling cheeses, cured meats and sausages, who refused to give her name because of the bitterness that has been stoked up.

.The referendum result was unambiguous – while 90 people were in favour of allowing gold exploration to go ahead, 180 were implacably opposed.

.Many people feared that the valley, with its crystal-clear streams, coniferous forests and timber barns, would have been irrevocably scarred by the mine, from which aroundfive million ton of rock would have been dug.

.The area is the epitome of Alpine tranquillity – when The Sunday Telegraph visited Curaglia, the largest single village, it was all but deserted, the quiet broken only by the tinkling of bells around the necks of goats in a wooden pen on the main street.

..Eagles soared in the mist swirling around the high peaks which form a dramatic backdrop to the onion-domed parish church.

.In winter the pass leading into the valley is frequently closed by avalanches and heavy snowfall."The mine would have had a big impact on the valley, there would have been a huge cost to the environment," said Nicole Venzin, 17, who works in a clothes shop in the town of Chur, 45 miles away, because of a lack of jobs in the valley.

.It was not just environmental worries that fuelled the 'no' vote. Young men in the villages worried that the 200 miners needed to develop the project might steal their girlfriends. Even the young women were unenthusiastic about the prospect of an influx of newcomers.

."It's very peaceful in the valley. But if the mine was allowed there would be a lot of cars, a lot of people."

.Lorena Bundi, 17, who works in a pharmacy, said: "There would have been more children in the school, and it would have been good for the shops, but what about the rivers where we go fishing?"

.But Thomas Boehm, 41, who works in the Hotel Vallastscha, which has the only bar and restaurant in the valley, said the mine would have reversed the valley's long-term demographic decline.Ninety of its inhabitants are over the age of 75 and young people leave as soon as they can because of the lack of work.

.There are no ski lifts or chalets and the only tourists who come here are fishermen, cross-country skiers and hunters in search of red deer and chamois.

."The mine would have been very positive.Look at this picture," he said, pointing at a black and white print of the village from 60 yearsago, showingtwo children in grubby smocks playing in an unpaved back alley lined with wooden-tiled houses.

."If nothing new happens here, the valley will go back to how it wasthen.There'll be no future for young people. The village is dying but people here are only thinking from one day to the next," said Mr Boehm, a German who has lived in Switzerlandfor 18 years.

.The mine would have been developed by a Canadian firm, Vancouver-based NV Gold.Some preliminary drilling in the 1980s, and more recent geological tests, showed that the snowy peaks overlooking the Medel Valley are rich in goldore. The tests showed that the local rock contained10 grams of goldper tonne, which is double the minimum for a viable mine.

.Nobody really knows how much goldthere is, or where a mine would have been sited, because the referendum result squashed the chance of any further exploratory drilling. But John Watson, the company's president and CEO, estimated that the mine could have yielded around 800,000 ounces of gold, which at today's prices would have been worth $1.2bn.

.The villagers would have received a share in royalties amounting to 30-40 million Swiss francs. There would also have been money spent by miners in shops and businesses during the estimated10 year life of the project.

.Local taxes and rates would have been slashed, businesses would have been offered cheap loans and there would have been bags of cash for new projects to inject life into the valley.

.Mr Watson said that past negotiations had led him to believe that the villagers would approve the mine unanimously at last Sunday's referendum.

."It would have had a very small footprint but it wouldn't have been invisible.It would have required parking lots, buildings, that kind of infrastructure.

."They were asking us what it would look like. We couldn't tell them with any accuracy because we haven't done the exploration and we don't know where the ore might be. Am I disappointed with the decision? Yes."

.The mine would not have been an open-cast scar on the valley."It would have been accessed by a tunnel into the mountain," said Mr Watson, speaking by telephone from Colorado.

.One of the mine's biggest proponents was Peter Binz, the mayor of the valley, whose eye for a business opportunity has been honed by his day job with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Zurich.

."The population is declining – there were 850 people living here in the 1960s – so we are lookingfor new opportunities.The mine would have brought fresh blood. We cannot stay as a museum – we need a future for our young people. To do nothing is not an option – that way we will just continue to die as a community."

.Such arguments failed to sway the majority of the valley's inhabitants.The conservatism for which the Swiss have been renowned for centuriesultimately snubbed out calls for change.

."The money would have been nice," said 17-year-old Nicole Venzin, sitting on a bench on Curaglia's main street as elderly womenentered the tiny supermarket with shopping bags."But what sort of future would we have if we ruined the environment?"

If you know the other and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

Sun Tzu

We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.